


The Women of Firefly

by LordRebeccaSama



Category: Firefly
Genre: Character Analysis, Essays, Gen, Women Being Awesome, Women in TV shows, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Written for a Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordRebeccaSama/pseuds/LordRebeccaSama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had to write a paper for my Study in Film Aesthetics class, so I wrote about Firefly. If the title doesn't give it away, I examine how the four key women in <i>Firefly</i> are strong women who know what they want out of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Women of Firefly

Women in television shows, especially those in the western or science-fiction genre, are traditionally portrayed in secondary roles to support the main character, typically a male. Some examples are _Star Trek_ , _F Troop_ , and some arguments can be made for the Matt Smith years of _Doctor Who_. One notable exception is the Barbara Stanwyck character of Victoria Barkley found in the show _The Big Valley_.

Over time, things have changed, but even today, women are still not commonly represented as strong, confident leaders, or not as someone whose only purpose is to get kidnapped and have to be rescued.

In 1975, a critique was done of the current television shows and found that the following seven points were true:

  * "Female characters are fewer in number and less central to the plot.
  * Marriage and parenthood are considered more important to a woman's than to a man's life.
  * Television portrays the traditional division of labour in marriage.
  * Employed women are shown in traditionally female occupations, as subordinates to men and with little status or power.
  * TV-women are more personally-and less professionally-oriented than TV-men.
  * Female characters are more passive than male characters.
  * Television dramatic programming ignores the existence of the women's movement" (Ni).



Many of these tropes are still used in television today, but one recent show, _Firefly_ and its movie/sequel, _Serenity_ , is a great example of a show that can create complex female characters without resorting to typical stereotypes. This paper will explore the four women of _Firefly_ and demonstrate how the show breaks through the stereotypes in the critique to create real female characters.

_Firefly_ is a space-western television series created by Joss Whedon which ran on FOX in 2002. Five hundred years in the future, after the Earth was used up, Malcolm Reynolds and his rag-tag crew travel the 'verse in a Firefly class ship named Serenity taking any odd jobs they can get their hands on. In the words of Shepherd Book, the priest on Serenity, "A ship would bring you work, a gun would help you keep it" ( _Firefly_ wiki). While it was not very popular during its initial run, it has become a cult classic in the science-fiction community.

The women in _Firefly_ are not damsels in distress or blushing brides. Zoë, Kaylee, Inara, and River are four women who have likes and dislikes, like any other person. They do not fit into any one trope, instead they have a combination of traits that make up their entire personality. They each have strengths and weaknesses, but they are real and that is what makes them great examples of real women in a TV show.

Zoë Alleyne Washburne is the second in command on Serenity. She fought in the Unification War with Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Mal) and was there with him at the Battle of Serenity Valley. She is married to the ship's pilot Hoban Washburne (Wash), whom she married against Mal's orders ("War Stories"). She has a deadpan sort of humor, is good with weapons, and sneaking up on people she needs to shoot or take down.

Kaywinnet Lee Frye, otherwise known as Kaylee, is the mechanic of Serenity. She is always cheerful and can be seen wearing overalls over flowered shirts. Kaylee has a crush on Simon that does not gain any momentum until the end of movie. She sees the best in everyone, has a natural intuition for machines, and she is able to fix anything that goes wrong on Serenity.

Inara Serra is a registered companion (a prostitute). She rents one of the shuttles on Serenity and her presence allows Mal and his crew to go to places that they would not have otherwise been able to go to. Despite being a high class prostitute, she is a confident woman who knows what she wants out of life and knows how to handle herself when faced with challenges.

River Tam is the youngest person that rides on Serenity. She is not a part of the crew, just a passenger. She came to be on Serenity when her brother Simon brought her on inside of the cryogenic container. She is a reader, or physic, and it is implied that she had been a reader before attending the Academy. River is in inquisitive girl who gets used against her will for the good of the Alliance.

The first point the critique makes is that there are fewer females in less central plot roles. Unlike in a lot of other science-fiction shows like _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ , in _Firefly_ , there is almost an equal number of females to males in the main recurring cast. There are four females and five males that fly on Serenity and are in every episode and the movie. The women are also central to the plot.

Mal (the captain) and Zoë have known each other for a long time, and he trusts her to have his back in a fight. In episode two, "The Train Job", the crew is tasked to steal medical supplies from a train. Before they even get the job, Mal, Jayne, and Zoë are at an Alliance friendly bar on Unification Day. Like every year, Mal gets into an argument, but instead of taking the first punch, he distracts the man by saying "Nothing, I just wanted you to face me so she could get behind ya". When the man turns behind him, Zoë pistol whips him across his face without any hesitation. This type of situation happens again in the episode "Ariel" where Mal distracts the doctor while Zoë gets behind him and zaps him with the handles from a crash cart. Mal trusts Zoë to clean up his messes while out on a job and it shows by how they work together to take out problems.

River also has a plot line that is all her own. If the series was allowed to continue its proposed seven season run, the role of the "hands of blue" would have been explored and explained. However, even without the explanation, the show gives hints to what went on in the Alliance school where she was being trained as an assassin. The whole reason why she and Simon are on Serenity is because they are on the run from the Alliance.

The second point is that marriage and parenthood are more important to the woman than the man, and the division of labor in the marriage. Marriage is not something that is addressed very often in _Firefly_ , except for the fact that Zoë and Wash are married, and the episode where Mal gets married ("Our Mrs. Reynolds"), but not to any of the crew. In the show, Zoë and Wash both think that their marriage is important. They like spending time together when there is downtime. Zoë likes to keep the business of her marriage between her and her husband (a notion that he does not share, since in the episode "Bushwacked", he's telling the Alliance about his favorite part of her). Despite the fact that she wants kids and he doesn't ("Heart of Gold"), Zoë and Wash are a great team and try to relax and enjoy each other's company as much as possible. When Wash dies in the movie, Zoë panics at first, trying to get him to wake up and move, but after Mal pulls her away, she is all business. She still loves her husband, but knows that it was not the time to mourn him. The typical division of labor does not happen in their marriage. Zoë has the higher rank on the ship and generally goes on jobs with Mal and Jayne, while Wash stays behind and pilots the ship.

While Kaylee does not have a husband, or boyfriend, she does like sex. She is not looking for a husband at any time of the show, but throughout the entire series, Kaylee has a crush on Simon. He finds out about it in the movie, and before they kiss, Kaylee complains to Mal, "Goin' on a year now I ain't had nothin' twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries!" In "Jaynestown", she and Simon are drinking and she is trying to have him get a clue that she likes him. The next day she teases him, "When we made love last night." He replies, "We did what?" Laughing, she responds, "You really are such an easy mark." Kaylee is not shy about sex and she likes to use it to her advantage to rile up Simon. Her nonchalant attitude goes against other TV show themes where they pretend that women are not having sex, or are being, as they call them, sluts or whores. Kaylee likes having a good time and judging by her words, it has been a long time since she has been with a real person.

The third point that is made is that women are shown in traditionally female occupations, like housewives, nurses, and secretaries. All of the women on Firefly do not have typical roles in society. Zoë is second in command of a spaceship and served in the war as a soldier, Kaylee is the mechanic, Inara is a companion, and River is a genius.

Zoë is a leader who knows how to take charge and command a group. In "War Stories", Mal and Wash are taken by the criminal Niska. Zoë collects money from the rest of the crew and goes to rescue them. Niska says that she only has enough for one of them and starts to say that she has to make a choice, only to have Zoë cut him off with, "Him. [She points at Wash] I'm sorry, you were going to ask me to choose, right? Do you wanna finish?". She makes the decision to rescue her husband and take him to safety before gathering the crew and staging a rescue for the captain.

Kaylee's mechanical genius is clear from the first time we see her in the engine room in the first episode "Serenity". However, the first time, chronology, that she steps into the engine room, she fixes it right up. The ships old mechanic, Bester, says that the engine is broken, and Kaylee responds with, "No, it ain't…I seen the trouble plain as day when I was down there on my back before" ("Out of Gas"). Within seconds, she is able to fix the problem and get the ship running again. In the episodes "Bushwacked" and "Shindig", Kaylee talks about Serenity's engine and features, and about engines in general, respectively. She knows her stuff and the men she is talking to in "Shindig" are enthralled by her opinion on the engines. Kaylee is the opposite of the trope of men as a mechanic. Many times it is shown how she knows just as much, maybe more, about engines than some of the men she is talking to.

Companions are smart, cultured, skilled individuals that are highly respected in their line of work. It is very obvious that Inara is smart and knows her way around in the 'verse. As seen in "Shindig", she knows how to handle a sword since she is trying to teach Mal how to handle one. She also handles a crossbow in the movie. Earlier in the movie, she shows some skill with marital arts, even if it does nothing against the Operative. In a deleted scene from the movie, Inara states that she started training at twelve, "years of discipline and preparation before the physical act of pleasure was even mentioned. Control was the first lesson, and the last". Being a companion takes a lot of skill and knowledge.

In traditional society, women were thought to be not as smart as men, but River shows that she is smarter than everyone that she encounters. In the first episode, Simon explains, that to River, "there was nothing that didn't come as naturally to her as breathing does to us." In the episode "Safe", there is a flashback to River and Simon as children. In the flashback, River is correcting Simon's work. During one of her less lucid periods in the episode "Jaynestown", she takes Book's bible and starts to fix it by ripping out pages and rewriting passages. She claims that it does not make sense, even stating that "Noah's ark is a problem". She is trying to rewrite the book so that it makes logical sense. River even sends coded messages to Simon while stuck at the Academy. She is able to process vast amounts of information and express it, even if some of it gets jumbled on its way out since leaving the Academy.

The final point that shows _Firefly_ portrays women differently is how they show them no more or less passive than the male characters. Zoë is a badass, as shown by all of the examples I have already talked about. Kaylee can be brave, even when she is scared out of her mind, Inara handles her clients in a professional manner, and River was trained as an assassin.

Although Kaylee does not know how to actually use a gun, she handles one in the episode "War Stories" and in the movie. In "War Stories", she never manages to fire it, but she stands guard and tries her best to go against Niska's men. In the movie, Kaylee is able to fire her gun at the approaching Reavers. However, she is really spurned on to fight after she admits to Simon that she likes him and they kiss. In "Objects in Space", Kaylee is tied up and threatened by Jubal. River gives Kaylee a pep talk, and even though she is scared of Jubal and what he could do to her, she escapes her bonds and goes up to unlock the crews' quarters. Even though she was scared out of her mind, she overcame her fear to save the people she cares about. She is a wholesome person that cares for everyone on the crew, and a genius mechanic that can fix any problem that presents itself.

Companions are respected and it is a great privilege to be able to hire one. In the episode "The Train Job", Zoë and Mal are late getting back to the ship, so Inara goes in and gets them out by saying that Mal is her indentured servant. By using her rank as a registered companion, she was able to retrieve the duo. In "Shindig", Inara is invited to a fancy party by a man named Atherton Wing. He calls her a whore, and then Mal punches him, challenging him to a dual. When Atherton loses, he threatens that she will never get another client, but in reality, it is he who will never be able to hire another companion because there will be a black mark on his name in the client registry. Companions, and by extension Inara, are the ones who have the power when dealing with their clients.

At the Academy, River was being trained as an assassin. They also tried to get her physic abilities under control so the Alliance could use it to their advantage. They implanted a hidden message in her brain so that when she hears a certain code, in this case, the Fruity Oaty Bar commercial, she goes into attack mode and kills everyone around her. In "War Stories", she takes Kaylee's gun and shoots three guys dead after glancing at their positions for a second. In the movie, she takes on a bunch of Reavers by herself using only her own body and a sword and hatchet she stole off of some of the Reavers attacking her. Despite being conditioned for violence, she was still able to maintain a sense of herself and the innocence that a seventeen year old girl should have. However, there are still times when she is unsure of herself and she recognizes that something is wrong. River is a strong young woman who tries her best to remain herself despite the Alliance's interference.

Zoë, Kaylee, Inara, and River are not perfect women, but they are a better reflection of reality and can be considered 'real' characters. They are as important as the men in the story, they do not value marriage any more than the men do, have just as much power over their lives as the men, have important (and typically male) occupations, and are not passive beings. They each have problems, but they try and fix their mistakes and overcome their fears. The women in _Firefly_ are real women with real problems. They do not run away and hide when the going gets tough. These four put on a brave face and show the world that women can be just as good, if not better, then the men that they are up against. Since they are 'real', they are more believable characters and people can relate to them. Also, audiences can learn from their examples and potentially break down stereotypes in 'real life'.

 

**Sources**  
Ni, Cheryl. "TV Drama." _Portrayal of Women in the Media_. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, I got a 100 on it :D Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!!


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